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جمعرات, جولائی 19, 2012

State-sponsored massacre of Muslims in Myanmar

Described as the Palestine of Asia by the UN, the Rohingya Muslim community in Burma currently going through an unutterable ordeal at the hands of the Rakhine extremist Buddists in Arakan who are targeting the Muslim minority with the worst from of religious cleansing.
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Ethnic cleansing is rife in Myanmar and is turning into a human tragedy
of colossal proportions. A confidential United Nations report dated May
29, 2011 and marked “Not for Public Citation or Distribution”, defines
ethnic cleansing as a “purposeful policy designed by one ethnic or
religious group to remove by violent and terror-inspiring means the
civilian population of another ethnic or religious group from certain
geographic areas.”

What is happening in Myanmar to the Rohingya
Muslims violates international laws and is to be categorized as crime
against humanity.

Unfortunately, the Myanmar peace prize
laureate Aung San Suu Kyi has turned a blind eye and a deaf ear to the
plight of the Rohingya Muslims. Maybe she has forgotten her own words on
democracy and human rights that, “The struggle for democracy and human
rights in Burma is a struggle for life and dignity.”

Reportedly,
the settlement of the Rohingya Muslims in this region dates back to the
eighth century. However, in the seventies, the junta embarked on a
systematic program of religious cleansing of the Rohingya Muslims who
are denied their basic rights, i.e. the right to freedom of movement,
marriage, faith, identity, ownership, language, heritage and culture,
citizenship, education etc. Deplorable as it is, the Muslims in Myanmar
are among the most persecuted minorities in the world according to UN.

According
to reports, 650 of nearly one million Rohingya Muslims have been
murdered as of June 28. On the other hand, 1,200 others are missing and
90,000 more have been displaced.

US photographer Greg Constantine
has recently released a book of black and white photography titled
“Exiled to Nowhere: Burma’s Rohingya.” He believes that “One of the
things that is lost in the discussions of the issues of
statelessness-particularly with the Rohingya-are human stories.”

He relates the story of 20-year-old Kashida who had to “flee to
Bangladesh with her husband. The Burmese authorities had denied her
permission to get married, but when they discovered she had married in
secret and was pregnant they took away all her family’s money and cows
and goats. They forced Kashida to have an abortion, telling her: “This
is not your country; you don’t have the right to reproduce here.”

The
dire humanitarian crisis has already begun to assume tragic proportions
and Muslims and non-Muslims alike are beginning to respond with
perturbation and fear.

Iran's Foreign Ministry has called for end to violence in Myanmar.

“It is expected that the Myanmar government will prepare the ground for
solidarity, national unity and asserting the rights of Muslims in the
country and that it will avert violence and a human catastrophe in this
regard,” Foreign Ministry Spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said on Monday.

What is mind-boggling is the silence of Burma symbol of democracy Aung San Kvi as well as international powers.

Iranian lawmaker Hossein Naqavi-Hosseini has suggested that the Islamic
Republic of Iran should call on the Organization of Islamic Cooperation
to hold an ad hoc meeting concerning the Muslim massacre in Myanmar.

Also,
the president of India’s Jamiat Ulma-i-Hind has voiced concern about
the massacre, calling for an end to the humanitarian crisis in the
country. Maulana Syed Arshad Madani lashed out at the Myanmar government
for being indifferent to the massacre of Muslims by extremist
Buddhists. He also criticized the silence of the international community
and human rights organizations across the world about this humanitarian
tragedy.

The International Union for Muslim Scholars (IUMS) has
strongly condemned the brutal massacre perpetrated against the Rohingya
Muslims and has demanded that the Organization of Islamic Cooperation
(OIC) take necessary and urgent steps to prevent religious cleaning and
these crimes against humanity in this region.

The statement
reads, “The IUMS is reviewing in all concern what has befallen the
Muslims in the Muslim region of Arakan, Burma, of fierce killing,
displacement and persecution since a long time, not to mention
displacement of them, and demolition of their homes, properties and
mosques at the hands of the religious extremists in the Buddhist
community. Unfortunately, the Buddhist government acts as a bystander in
face of the heinous massacres escalating day after day against the
Muslim minorities in the country. The numbers of casualties, in the
attacks that are considered the most ferocious in the history of
targeting the Muslims in Burma, are countless.”

In view of the
ongoing inhumane violations in Myanmar, the US and its western allies,
which keep pontificating about human rights in the world, have feigned
ignorance about this humanitarian catastrophe. Why? Because they will
not be able to reap any benefits of their future efforts in the country
as they do in the Middle East and elsewhere. To crown it all, they have
kept an agonizingly meaningful silence over the massacre.

It is certainly incumbent upon every person who cares about human
dignity to fly in the face of this inhumanity and give a helping hand to
the downtrodden Myanmar Muslims.

As the great Persian poet
Sa'di says, “Human beings are members of a whole, In creation of one
essence and soul. If one member is afflicted with pain, Other members
uneasy will remain. If you've no sympathy for human pain, The name of
human you cannot retain!”
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